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Guyana Men’s B/Ball team hunts first ever Caribbean title …
Looks to emulate women’s team 1996 victory
By Sean Devers
The National Male Basketball team hunts their first ever Caribbean title in this
The National U-19 team practicing at CASH on Tuesday night.
year’s Caribbean Basketball Confederation (CBC) Championships scheduled for Tortola, BVI from July 1-5 and their hopes should hinge on how well their overseas players gel with the locals. The overseas players should all be in Guyana by June 24.
The only time this country won any senior Caribbean Basketball was in 1996 when the Women’s team took the Championship title in Trinidad & Tobago.
Back then the Women’s team was aided by the inclusion of seven overseas players and the 2014 Men’s side could take some inspiration from that fact.
While this year’s National Women’s team will have only a single overseas player in Philomena George, who plays in Trinidad, for their leg of the tournament which runs from July 8-12, the Men’s team, set to depart for the BVI on June 29, will have a player who played in the NBA among their overseas recruits in 32-year-old Rawle Marshall.
Marshall is the first Guyanese born NBA player. He currently plays professional basketball in Europe and is scheduled to arrive next Monday. Marshall played in the NBA in 2005 and 2007.
The 38-year-old Jason Misfire, who played in the NBA in 1999, is the only other Guyanese-born player to have played in the NBA.
Darren Collision, who helped the Los Angeles Clippers to the Quarterfinals in this season’s NBA, was born in California to Guyanese parents. Both of his parents are from Guyana where his mother, former World Ranked 400-meters runner June Griffith, dominated on the track in the 1970s.
National Head Coach Mark Agard explained that by coming in almost three weeks before the Guyanese depart for the BVI on June 29, it will also mean both the overseas and the locals will be on the same page unlike in their last tournament in the Bahamas when some of the overseas players only joined the rest of the Guyana team when they were already in the Bahamas.
Local members of the National team during a training session at CASH.
Coach Agard told Kaieteur Sport, the availability of overseas players, who play a higher level of Basketball in their various colleges, increases the chances of Guyana winning by 80%.
The Persaud brothers (Tyler & Damian), Richard Hall, who toured Croatia with a United States team, are already in the country and are of Guyanese parents.
However, overseas players 6ft 9 inch Japanese-based Forward 31-year-old Gordan Klaiber, Delroy James, Steffan Farley, Ray Victor and Trinidad based 35-year-old Andrew Ifill, who is the oldest player invited to the ‘try outs’ and Marshall, were all born in Guyana.
According to the Guyana Amateur Basketball Federation (GABF) the entity has to raise $12 million for the trip to Tortola and has so far accumulated about 35% of that amount even with the $2 million contribution by the Government.
The GABF is appealing to Government, the private sector and other sponsors to support their fund raising drive.
Meanwhile, the National Men’s and Women’s teams along with the Guyana Under-19 Squad presently training for the Inter-Guiana Games scheduled for August in Guyana, will continue training sessions on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sunday at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall (CASH) from 18:00hrs each day.
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